


Vow

by Anonymous



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Can be read as shippy or platonic between Hamid and Azu, Friendship, Gen, Non-Graphic Discussion of Past Sexual Assault, Religiously-motivated violence, Trauma, Trust, vengeance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:27:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26901373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Hamid tells Azu something he's never told anyone before.  Azu reacts as any paladin of Aphrodite would, with a little assistance from Zolf.
Relationships: Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan & Azu
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42
Collections: Anonymous





	Vow

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the tags! To be honest I wrote this one purely for myself and I'm hesitant about putting it out there, but I figured, what the hell.

With Cel and the kobolds busy finishing up the last of the repairs on the airship, Azu and Hamid have been taking turns joining Zolf and Captain Earhart as they interview potential crew members. They’d set themselves up in a meeting room on the ground floor of the hotel to handle the meetings, but so far, interested parties had been few and far between—not all that surprising, given how dangerous the journey is bound to be. Neither she nor Hamid have much to contribute when it comes to understanding who has the right qualifications for airship work, but it had become clear right away after the first few interviews that someone else ought to be around to act as a buffer for Zolf and Earhart. They might be the most experienced when it came to ships (in the air or the sea), but they weren’t exactly personable.

Azu is upstairs in her room re-waterproofing her boots when there’s a knock on the door. She recognizes the quick series of taps as Hamid, giving herself a second to smile fondly before she calls out her answer.

“Come in.”

The door opens and the halfling slips inside, looking more than usually small compared to the huge furniture. Azu only spares him a quick glance before looking down at her boots once more. They’re nearly finished—just a few more spots to go over.

“I thought I had a little longer. Is it time to switch out already?”

The silence that meets her question is the first clue she gets that something is wrong. Azu looks up, blinking, wondering if Hamid had perhaps not heard her. He hasn’t stepped any further into the room, lingering beside the door like he’s thinking about walking right back out of the room. Which is odd. Then, Azu notices his body language is all wrong. She sets down the wax and cloth; the way he’s twisting his hands together can’t mean anything good.

“What happened? Did they scare someone else away?”

Hamid doesn’t say anything, or make any sound at all, and he isn’t looking at her. That, Azu thinks, is not a good sign at all. She frowns and gets to her feet, approaching him. Before she can ask another question, Hamid speaks, his voice strangled and quiet.

“They’re interviewing someone right now.”

It’s a simple statement of fact; what reason could Hamid have, Azu wonders, for saying it with such desolation in his voice. He still hasn’t looked at her.

“I. Need a favor, Azu. I—um. I need you to—make sure the person they’re interviewing—that they don’t hire him.” She’s close enough now to see it as well as hear it in his voice—Hamid is shaking like a leaf. “I’d—I’d really. I’d owe you one. Please.”

Worried, curious, Azu takes another step closer. She reaches out, to touch Hamid’s shoulder, and Hamid steps back, out of reach. He’s never done that before; Azu’s stomach twists in alarm.

“Okay. Can you tell me why? Hamid, what’s wrong? You seem—very not alright.”

Hamid laughs, and the sound of it is awful. Azu loves Hamid’s laugh, but this one is all wrong, hollow and soft. There is a long, heavy silence as she waits for him to explain. Just as she is starting to think he won’t, he speaks up.

“I’m—going to tell you something, Azu, but it’s—it’s just so you understand h-how important this is, and I don’t want to- to talk about it after this, ever, _at all_ , alright?”

Azu’s hands have come up to nervously grip her necklace, squeezing tight to feel the comforting warmth of it. Whatever this is, it can’t be good, and she says a quick, silent prayer to Aphrodite for strength before she gives her answer.

“Alright.”

Hamid gives a small nod, and then doesn’t speak. The silence stretches agonizingly, and Azu waits. 

Eventually, in stilted, jerky bursts, Hamid begins to speak.

“I didn’t stick around long enough to hear—why he’s in Hiroshima or- or what kind of career he’s had that would make him fit for—crewing an airship but the. The person they’re talking to is—someone who was at boarding school. With me. When I first—came to England.

“I was. A very easy target, when I first started there. My family were so far away, and I didn’t have any friends at all, and I looked so different, and I b-barely spoke the language, and I was—a lot smaller than all the other boys, even the youngest ones, and not strong. But—the thing about boarding school. No matter what happened between the students, pranks and bullying and—anyway, nobody would tell any of the adults. And if they- if they did, the adults would punish _them_ for it. Not—not very gentlemanly, to tattle.

“I—sometimes I wonder what they would have done if I’d. Ever told any of them that he. Used to rape me. Quite—quite um—brutally. Maybe that would’ve been—it’s possible they would have done something, but I didn’t ever tell—so I don’t know if it would have made things better or worse. But I think about it, sometimes, because once I—made allies with the right sort of people—I think he just. Moved on to some other boy who was more vulnerable, and I often wonder if—if I’d—if maybe I could’ve stopped that.”

Azu is squeezing her necklace’s pendant so tightly that the edges of the design are digging into the flesh of her palm painfully. She is shaking too, now. But she doesn’t interrupt Hamid. Not even when he laughs again and _shrugs_. Like he could somehow make all that pain into something negligible by sheer force of will.

“Anyway, it—was a long time ago and it’s not something I—well, I just try not to think about it all that often, and it’s going to sound funny, but after all these years I almost didn’t recognize him when he first walked in. The years have not been kind to his hairline.”

Even with his face turned away from her, gaze fixed on the floorboards, Azu can see Hamid’s chin starting to waver, his eyes going too-bright.

“Honestly if it were just the four of us on the airship I wouldn’t have—I would’ve just—I wouldn’t have said anything. I’m a very different person than I was then and I’m not—helpless, anymore. But I. C-can’t stop thinking about the kobolds and—they’re—very easy—targets. They look different and they—can’t speak much English and they’re. Small and—not. S-s-strong.”

Hamid wipes the tears from his cheeks, drawing in a breath that is shuddery with the sobs he is holding back.

“And I—trust you, Azu. More than anybody on Earth. So I’m telling you this even though I don’t tell people this because I need you to please go down and tell Zolf and Earhart not to—not to hire him. Please. Because I’m not sure I can—keep them safe and if he—if he hurt any of them, I wouldn’t—I couldn’t live with myself.”

Azu makes herself let go of the pendant. She does not try to touch him again, but she says, with some firmness in her voice.

“Hamid, look at me, please?”

He hunches his shoulders, shrinking in on himself, but he looks up at her.

Azu’s face gives away nothing, her voice as grave as she can make it, “I will take care of this. While I do, I need you to stay here, in this room, and wait for me. Can you do that?”

Mute once more, Hamid nods. Azu believes him and moves for the door. On the way out, she picks up her key and her axe.

_____________

Despite growing up in Cairo, Hamid doesn’t know all that much about the cult of Aphrodite. He and Azu have passed pleasant hours together, with her explaining about seminary, about being trained as a paladin, about the vows she had sworn to her goddess.

She had not told him all of them.

As a general rule, Aphrodite’s followers were far less concerned with punishing evildoers than the followers of Apollo, Artemis, Poseidon, and all the rest. Their focus was on healing, on love.

But there is one very explicit exception to that rule.

Temples of Aphrodite are well-known as havens for anyone who has suffered from abuse and attacks of a sexual nature. The vows that Azu swore when she became a paladin and received Aphrodite’s blessing were extremely clear on this point: it is one of her most sacred duties to protect anyone who has been victimized, and to do everything in her power to ensure that the person or people responsible do not survive long enough to hurt anyone else. Sometimes, being a force of love in the world meant healing a broken arm, and sometimes it meant killing a rapist; Azu never questioned that, during her years of training.

But she had only been with the temple in Cairo for a short time before she met Hamid and Sasha and Grizzop, and this is the first time that particular part of her oath has become relevant.

Her ears are ringing as she makes her way down the stairs of the hotel, heart beating fast even as an eerie kind of calm envelops her. She wonders if Aphrodite is responsible for that. Or perhaps it is shock. Either way, she is glad of it. The world glides past, indistinct and unimportant, as she walks out into the lobby of the hotel, rounding the front desk and heading for the meeting room. She notices, at that moment, that she is in her full plate mail—which is glowing rather brighter than usual—and only socks on her feet. She’s forgotten her boots entirely.

It doesn’t matter. A lot of things don’t matter, at that moment.

The door isn’t locked, and Azu passes through it easily. Zolf and Captain Earhart are sitting in their usual chairs, and across from them is a thoroughly unexceptional-looking man. Pale blonde hair—Hamid had been right, about that receding hairline, despite his young age—and a bland, harmless face.

Azu draws upon Aphrodite, to detect the presence of evil. She doesn’t need to do so to confirm Hamid’s story, of course. She knows it is the truth, would never doubt him for an instant. But she needs to know for the future, just what this sort of evil _looks_ like. She needs to be able to recognize it, when it is tucked away behind a dimpled, bemused smile like the one the man turns on her as she comes in the door.

Zolf and Captain Earhart are speaking, but Azu doesn’t register the words. She crosses the room in two large strides and picks up the man by the throat, hauling him from the chair and toppling it onto the ground. It’s so easy to lift him, to pin him to the wall with only one hand. He feels as if he doesn’t weigh a thing.

“Azu, what in the name of—”

“Zolf.” Azu is strangely aware of her own voice as she speaks, the deepness of it ringing within her head, the calm gravity of it. “Do you trust me?”

She doesn’t take her eyes off the man, listening instead to Zolf spluttering in confusion.

“What—Azu, _yes_ , of course, but why—?” 

“The interview’s over. You need to find someone else for whatever the job is, because I’m going to take this man out behind the hotel, and I am going to kill him, right away. I promise you, it is nothing to do with our mission, or with the infection, or with anything that concerns either of you. Please, don’t try to stop me. I’m afraid my vow to Aphrodite is _very_ , very clear in this situation.”

She glances around, then. Earhart is watching, tense and observant, but her arms are folded in indifference. She has a very particular goal driving her, and very little time to care about anything else. If Guivres isn’t involved, it seems, it matters very little to her, if Azu wants to kill a man. Zolf is closer—he must have gotten out of his chair at some point—and Azu can see the color draining from his face. Zolf is a smart man. He knows, she is aware, considerably more about the Cult of Aphrodite than Hamid does. It would not be hard, to put the pieces together. Hamid must have left the room in quite a hurry, when this person arrived. Maybe there had been enough of an exchange for Zolf to be able to tell they knew one another, maybe not. Not hard to guess they might have, given this man’s poshness and Englishness. Hamid had fled, and a little while later, Azu had shown up and declared she was going to kill this person. Her allusion to her vow to Aphrodite is not a subtle one to work out; their vow to punish rapists is fairly common knowledge amongst the other Cults.

Azu watches Zolf’s face, as he puts it together. It’s more awful than she had expected, seeing it dawn on him. She turns away, looks at the man who is struggling quite fruitlessly in her grip.

“I’m coming, too.”

The cold fury in his voice confirms it for Azu; after they are done, she will have to ask him about not bringing the topic up with Hamid. She releases her grip, letting the man fall, crumpling to the floor of the conference room, gasping and choking for air. Before she has time to dig the manacles from her bag, Zolf has wrenched the man’s arm behind his back and hauled him to his feet.

“We won’t be long,” Zolf says, and Earhart grunts her acknowledgment. Zolf heads out first, wisely taking a different route that will avoid the main lobby and lead directly out the back doors. Azu follows after him. They do not pass anyone on their way and she squeezed the man’s throat much too hard for him to be able to make any kind of fuss that might draw attention. She catches flashes of his mouth gaping as he tries to call out for help.

Azu thinks of Hamid, fidgeting by the door of her hotel room, unable to speak. Hamid, with his beautiful voice, wrapped up in a thick silence he could barely claw his way out of. 

Nestled against her breastbone, Aphrodite’s necklace burns with steady, righteous heat. She tightens her grip on her axe, buzzing from head to toe with incandescent holy love.


End file.
